Topographie der Typographie

Entitled “Banalitäten” (Contingencies), issue no. 4 of “Merz”, a Dadaist magazine created by Kurt Schwitters in the early 1920s, was host to a Manifesto-programme by El Lissitzky, Russian architect, photographer and typographer close to the Suprematist and Constructivist movements. “Topographie der typographie” calls for a new way of constructing the book. In eight points, Lissitsky wants to get rid of all traditions and resolutely tame the page, the words, the letters. The book should stimulate the eye and the mind through a combination of techniques and a sense of spatialisation. Above all, the book should address both a new author and a new reader. But far from wanting to make the book an individual and individualistic object, El Lissitzky claims the book as a tool for everyone. El Lissitzky’s trajectory is as much a part of political history as it is of art and design, and reflects a period, the interwar, that was obsessed with speed, with a vision of the new man, with the desire, as weel, to wipe the slate clean and to invent, to build, to heckle, to provoke. Text submitted by officeabc.